It is truly a region you easily can fell in love with if you like nature, mountains, lakes, wild rivers, horses, dogs AND the friendly open minded Argentinians. Already when we entered Argentina the first time back in January we were wondering about the cars and trucks coming towards us were waving and using the flash light or horning. In the beginning we were alerted thinking there is maybe a police check upcoming or something on our bikes is wrong… but NO, they only want to greet you and showing their sympathy. And if you stop at any cross light they open their windows to talk to you and showing thumps up. The Argentinians are incredible welcoming you and always interested and excited.
Pretty soon we learned how to prepare a good asado (BBQ) and you can be pretty sure that each house in Argentina is having an asado place. The meat which they have here is really good (Kerstin never had that much meat before in her all life) and the wine doesn’t rank behind. We really enjoy it even though we did not adapt the time of doing the asado. The Argentines eat really late and Restaurants are often not open before 8pm. The opening time of the shops can challenge you as well. They close around noon mostly sharp at 1pm – ALL the shops. If you are lucky they open up at 5pm sometimes only 6pm or even later. So you have deal with it and either stock up or drive out again later for shopping.
We were facing the reality that our journey will come to an end soon. Sascha needs to be back in the office in June and we still need to find a new flat in Hamburg. We had to start organizing the transport of the bikes, the flights for us and our arrival home. So we skipped the idea to drive up to Brazil and Uruguay and stayed instead in the Andes. Here we found gorgeous places where we could combine enjoying our last days as best as possible and at the same time having internet and being able to do whatever we have to do.
On Easter Sunday we thought it is a good opportunity to ride a last time up an Andes Pass. El Paso Sistema Cristo Redentor connects Mendoza in Argentina with Santiago in Chile. Shortly before you cross the border you can ride up a steep sandy dirt road to “Christ the Redeemer of the Andes”; the road climbs 1 km over a sinuous 9 km from Las Cuevas to the pass. It is a monument high in the Andes at 3,832 meters and unveiled on 13 March 1904 as a celebration of the peaceful resolution of the border dispute between the two countries. We had a great day and ride except one drop of bitterness: while riding uphill behind a stinky slow truck for a while we overtook though two solid yellow lines… and guess what! Yep the police was just waiting for us uphill around the corner. We each got a ticket over 170 Dollar – AUTSCH! We could not talk us out and while we tried they caught another Motorcyclist… That was an expensive Easter-trip and Kerstin received her first ticked of her life in Argentina hey!
If you have a look at the pictures you will probably understand why it is so hard for us leaving this region. We hope you enjoy the pictures….
